y at
the end of their swing, the fact that at the appointed moment there will
be something there for you to grasp."

"And the confidence," said Ascher. "If the bankers in any country doubt
the solvency of the bankers in another country, if there's the smallest
hesitation, an instant's pause of distrust or fear, then international
credit collapses and----"

He flung out his arm with a gesture of complete hopelessness. I realised
that if anything went wrong between bankers in their trapeze act there
would be a very ugly smash.

"And in your case," I said, "there's no net underneath."

The girl and the three men were safe on firm ground again. They were
bowing final acknowledgments to the cheering crowd. I suppose they do
the same thing every night of their lives, but they were still able to
enjoy the cheering. Their faces were flushed and their eyes sparkled.
They are paid, perhaps pretty well paid, for risking their lives; but
the applause is the larger part of the reward.

"Also," I said to Ascher, "nobody cheers you. Nobody knows you're doing
it."

"No. Nobody knows we're doing it. Nobody sees our flights through the
air or guesses the supreme confidence we bankers must have in each
other. When anybody does notice us it's--well, our friend Gorman, for
instance."

Gorman holds the theory that financial men, Ascher and the rest, are
bloated spiders who spend their time and energy in trapping the world's
workers, poor flies, in gummy webs.

"And of course Gorman is right in a way," said Ascher. "I can't help
feeling that things ought to be better managed. But--but it's a pity
that men like him don't understand."

Ascher is wonderful. I shall never attain his mental attitude of
philosophic tolerance. I do not feel that Gorman is in any way right
about the Irish landlords. I felt, though I like the man personally,
that he and his friends are deliberately and wickedly perverse.

"Some day," said Ascher, "something will go wrong. A rope will break, or
a man will miss his grip, and then people in one place will be starving,
while people somewhere else have food all round them rotting in heaps.
Men will want all sorts of things and will not be able to get them,
though there will be plenty of them in the world. Men will think that
the laws of nature have stopped working, that God has gone mad. Hardly
any one will understand what has happened, just that one trapeze rope has
broken, or that one man has lost his nerve